Great Worm

The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated
by RTM. This is a play on Tolkien (compare elvish,
elder days). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth
books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire
regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM
crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hacker history;
certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.